I PRAY you, what's asleep?
The lily-pads, and riffles, and the reeds;
No longer inward do the waters creep,
No longer outwardly their force recedes,
And widowed Night, in blackness wide and deep,
Resumes her weeds.

I pray you, what 's awake?
A host of stars, the long, long milky way
That stretches out, a glistening silver flake,
All glorious beneath the moon's cold ray,
And myriad reflections on the lake
Where star-gleams lay.

I pray you, what 's astir?
Why, naught but rustling leaves, dry, sere, and brown:

We have walked in Love's land a little way,
We have learnt his lesson a little while,
And shall we not part at the end of day,
With a sigh, a smile?

A little while in the shine of the sun,
We were twined together, joined lips, forgot
How the shadows fall when the day is done,
And when Love is not.

We have made no vows—there will none be broke,
Our love was free as the wind on the hill,
There was no word said we need wish unspoke,
We have wrought no ill.

So shall we not part at the end of day,
Who have loved and lingered a little while,

Drowning is not so pitiful
As the attempt to rise.
Three times, 't is said, a sinking man
Comes up to face the skies,
And then declines forever
To that abhorred abode
Where hope and he part company,—
For he is grasped of God.
The Maker's cordial visage,
However good to see,
Is shunned, we must admit it,
Like an adversity.

I have no life but this,
To lead it here;
Nor any death, but lest
Dispelled from there;

Nor tie to earths to come,
Nor action new,
Except through this extent,
The realm of you.

Coldly, bleakly, drearily,
Evening died on Elbë's shore;
Winds were in the cloudy sky,
Sighing, mourning evermore.

Away, away, resign me now
To scenes of gloom and thoughts of fear;
I trace the signal on thy brow,
Welcome at last, though once so drear.

Alone I sat; the summer day
Had died in smiling light away;
I saw it die, I watched it fade
From misty hill and breezeless glade;

And thoughts in my soul were gushing,
And my heart bowed beneath their power;
And tears within my eyes were rushing
Because I could not speak the feeling,
The solemn joy around me stealing
In that divine, untroubled hour.

I asked myself, “O why has heaven
Denied the precious gift to me,
The glorious gift to many given
To speak their thoughts in poetry?

“Dreams have encircled me,” I said,

Don't tell me I'm proud of my brush and inkstone;
grown old, in a desolate room, I keep the blinds down.
Fish leap, kites fly, that's the way things should be;
plum scent and bamboo color my old acquaintances.
With sake, as with friends, I associate casually,
though with poems, as with mountains, I like things unique.
In life, in such things are found quiet and rest,
making me doubt that in heaven the moon waxes and wanes.

The cherry opens and I enter Kyoto,
the cherry falls and I plan to go home.
Poems in places for thirty days,
not a day without seeing the blossoms.
On eastern hills a thousand layers of snow;
in western suburbs myriad sheaths of haze.
A fun spring, I enjoy it yes,
but what to do with flowers in my hair?
Half of old friends in obituaries;
many acquaintances far away.
Pass by a place of past amusement,
and I feel harrowed even more.
For a drink under blossoms
I force myself into a bannered joint.

We call him strong who stands unmoved—
Calm as some tempest-beaten rock—
When some great trouble hurls its shock;
We say of him, his strength is proved:
But, when the spent storm folds its wings.
How bears he then Life's little things?

About his brow we twine our wreath
Who seeks the battle's thickest smoke,
Braves flashing gun and sabre-stroke,
And scoffs at danger, laughs at death;
We praise him till the whole land rings;
But—is he brave in little things?

We call him great who does some deed
That echo bears from shore to shore,—